Questioning War- Organizing Resistance

Blog for radio show Questioning War- Organizing Resistance with schedule and guest information and links, topics focused on deconstructing the major lies used to sell war, control thought, people, and dissent and how to organize resistance to a Global Police State.

Monday, October 6, 2008

WeThePeopleRadioNetwork.com announced today that it is ceasing operations. I am very sorry and will miss the show. I am disappointed that I will not be able to speak with Mike Nickerson, Anthony J. Hall, and Splitting the Sky. For the past few days, I have been working on this article, which has to do with the theme of tonight's scheduled show on- Rethinking Money

Evolution of the ApocalypseEmpire’s Demise- Human Renaissance

Apocalypse (Greek: Ἀποκάλυψις Apokálypsis; "lifting of the veil") is a term applied to the disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of humankind. Today the term is often used to refer to the end of the world, which may be a shortening of the phrase apokalupsis eschaton, which literally means "revelation at the end of the æon, or age.(1) "

The unraveling of the US and global financial system should not be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention, doubted the news headlines over the past decade, or plunged into an odyssey of self- and world-discovery by reading books, studying history, or seeking the truth behind the cultural myths that cocoon Americans into the notion that they live in the world’s beacon of democracy and freedom. The most surprising factor is that people who have created the crisis think that they can continue the scam by stealing another $850,000,000,000 overtly through the bailout, and even larger amounts covertly, to keep the game going for the world’s wealthiest people at the expense of everyone else.

In the past, Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and Rome fell when a small percentage of the population controlled nearly all of the wealth.(2) Today, the rich have never been richer nor the poor poorer. The concentration of wealth has been achieved by conquest, as well as by one of the most powerful tools of empire—money.

Debt-based monetary systems are the building blocks of empires, and generally empires collapse or topple when they have destroyed their ecological base. The current global empire severely threatens the forests, the oceans, the climate, the fertility of the soil, the aquifers, the bees, and innumerable other species, including humanity.

“When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters are polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.”

Caught up in the empire game, many have forgotten the difference between money and real wealth. Money is a human invention. It is not neutral. Who creates it, how it flows in a society, a nation, and the world is important and subject to change. Money is an agreement that can be backed either by force or by a spirit of cooperation.(4)

Bankers, like magicians, do not want to reveal their secrets. Able to create money out of thin air, they have learned that belief in the value of money is the key to their success. When people begin to doubt the purchasing power of money, banks fail and currencies collapse.

The “modern” fractional reserve banking system has evolved over centuries.(5) “Mortgage” literally means “death-gamble.” When mortgages were first introduced, those who risked their land to borrow money were literally risking the lives of their families, their liberty, and their hopes for the future. Only gradually, over eons of time, did the idea of a “mortgage” become more commonplace, acceptable, and even encouraged. Mortgages became attached to the “dream of home ownership” and provided the liquid currency to fuel “national economies.”

The origins of paper money can be traced to receipts that goldsmiths provided to their customers, who would leave their gold with a goldsmith for safekeeping. Centuries ago goldsmiths began giving out receipts for the gold that they safeguarded, and people soon learned that the receipts were more useful for business transactions than heavy amounts of gold. Some enterprising goldsmith figured out that it was not necessary to maintain a supply of gold equal to all the receipts issued, because all the customers would never come to claim their gold at the same time. Because large amounts of gold weren't necessary to ensure the utility of receipts, the goldsmith was able to issue many times as many receipts as he had gold in his vault, and the fractional reserve system was born. Since goldsmiths began to loan gold and receipts at interest, the system of "debt money" was born in which customers had to pay back more money (receipts) than were in circulation—thus ensuring that the community as a whole would always be in debt to the goldsmith.

When money is created by the banks and loaned to governments or business at interest, it is mathematically impossible to pay back all the money with interest. Not all debts can be repaid, so foreclosures occur. In this way wealth is continually transferred from the poor to the rich.

Kings, queens, and nations have succumbed to the power of those who lend them money, finance their wars, pay their armed forces—and own the means of communication, which either provide rulers their aura of legitimacy or can just as easily demonize and dethrone them.

Over a hundred years ago, the populist movement in the United States rose up in the wake of the collapse of agricultural prices that threatened farmers and enriched bankers. The farmers pushed for monetary reform, including the demand that dollars be backed by silver rather than gold. The populists also argued that money should be created by the government for the benefit of the people, rather than by banks for the benefit of the bankers.

In 1890 the German economist Silvio Gesell formulated a theory of money that was as revolutionary as the notion that the earth circles the sun, rather than the other way around—despite appearances. Gesell suggested securing the money flow by making money a governmental service subject to a use fee. Instead of paying interest to those who have more money than they need, people would pay a small fee if they kept money out of circulation. The fee would serve as income to the government and would reduce the amount of taxes needed to carry out public tasks.

Gesell's ideas were tested by the mayor of Worgl, Austria, in 1932 when economic conditions were deplorable. The mayor proposed to substitute a local currency for the national currency—which he called “work certificates.” On the first of every month the holder had to affix a 1 percent stamp of the face value of the certificate. The "taxes" went into the community chest, to provide a relief fund for the invalids or elderly who were unable to work. Because of the stamp tax, taxes were paid quickly, accounts were settled without the usual delays, and even the bank became eager to loan out money, as fast as it received it.

The mayor then embarked upon a public works program "to alleviate want, give work and bread," which exceeded his highest hopes. The conditions of the streets of Worgl had been a standing joke to the people in the surrounding countryside. In less than four months, sewers and improvements were completed. Later, other streets were paved, and even streets outside of Worgl were repaired. Prosperity blossomed throughout Worgl.

Inspired by Worgl’s success, a meeting of 200 Austrian mayors decided unanimously to follow the Worgl example in their impoverished communities. At this point, fearful of losing its power, the private Austrian National Bank protested against the shattering of its money-making monopoly. After a legal fight, the Austrian Supreme Court sided with the bank, as might be expected. Although this experiment was abruptly terminated in Austria, the Worgl experience inspired three or four hundred scrips in circulation in the United States, Canada, and Mexico during the Great Depression.(6)

If the Federal Reserve were actually a part of the US government, would the US government need to borrow money? Wouldn’t it be able to just print its own? In 1913 the Federal Reserve Act took away Congress’s Constitutional power of regulating the value of money and bequeathed it to private banks.(7) Since then the financial plight of the US government has been dire and under pressure from the very rich, who choose which candidates and politicians will serve their interests and oust those who threaten them.

In recent times there have been numerous communications revolutions, including radio, television, and the Internet, and social movements have also arisen. At the same time there has also been the consolidation and expansion of corporate power served by new centers of supranational power, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. Alex Carey said:

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.''(8)

During this time money and resources have flowed from poor countries to rich industrialized nations. The Structural Adjustment Programs forced upon nations by the World Bank and the IMF have meant shifting food production from domestic needs to export crops, devaluing local currency to encourage exports, cutting social spending on health and education, reducing wages, privatizing national industries, selling off natural resources, and removing tariff protections for local industries. Hunger, unemployment, hardship and inequality are the direct and calculated results of these World Bank policies.

The vertical integration of entire industries has taken place with the rise of giant transnational corporations whose economies are larger than that of many countries.

At the end of World War II, when the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed, the dollar became the de facto “world currency” and was backed by American gold reserves. In 1972, in the midst of the Vietnam War, when President Nixon detached the dollar from the gold standard, he detached the dollar from anything of real tangible value and basically allowed the currency rates of every nation to fluctuate in relationship to one another’s currencies. The dollar was then backed by oil and American military might.

In those days 98 percent of foreign exchange transactions had to do with the exchange of goods and services and only 2 percent were speculative. Today the vast majority of foreign exchange transactions have been speculative and less than 2 percent are for the exchange of real goods and services.

Measurements have inherent limitations and biases. The family existed before money did. Villages grew out of interdependent relationships between families. As societies have grown more complex, hierarchies have developed and the "public family" or the state has created institutions that have taken over many of the functions once met within the household, such as educating children and caring for the sick.(9)

In urban environments, basic living skills have been lost, people are more dependent than ever on the state or a monetized economy to meet their basic needs. In order to get slaves or labor to serve industries, people had to be forced away from the land where they once were able to sustain themselves.

In the film “Who's Counting? Marilyn Waring on Sex, Lies and Global Economics,” Marilyn unravels many of the problems in the global system. The IMF and the World Bank were created to maintain certain power relations and exercise control over the world's resources. The U.N. System of National Accounts was based upon a pamphlet entitled "How to Pay for the War." That system, imposed upon every country that joins the U.N., enables the global elite to finance their militaries, to engage in conflicts with other nations, and to build internal security forces to control populations who might not agree with the expropriation of their country's resources.

The system assumes that the unpaid work of women—who are bearing children, raising them, feeding them, carrying for the sick and aged, and maintaining a home or garden—is of little or no importance. Nor does the system recognize the value of forests or the natural world unless they can be chopped down and sold or monetized in some way. Monetary transactions are measured, no matter how devastating their effects are on the environment. The arms industry is the most lucrative of all industries. It is in the economic interest of the major powers that there always be a war going on somewhere. This pathological system does not recognize the inherent value of life, peace, or the earth itself. It does not even notice anything of unquantifiable value; it only sees that which it measures—money.(10)

Maximizing profits is the primary value in modern economics. The economic measure of monetary flow is directly related to the rape of the earth, the amount of exploitation occurring within a country, and how effectively the world's parasites are expropriating the labor of others and the natural world.

The global economy is a war economy. While the importance of oil for both energy and military purposes is enormous, dwarfing the oil industry in monetary terms is the illegal trafficking in drugs. Laundered drug money in enormous quantities has always found its way into the large financial centers and into key industries.

In criminal law, fraud is the crime or offense of deliberately deceiving another in order to damage them – usually, to obtain property or services unjustly …

Fraud for profit is often perpetrated by industry professionals. There are generally multiple loan transactions with several financial institutions involved. These frauds include misrepresentations including the following: Income is overstated, assets are overstated, collateral is overstated, the length of employment is overstated (or fictitious employment is reported), and employment is backstopped by conspirators. The property value is inflated (faulty appraisal) to increase the sales value to make up for there being no down payment and to generate cash proceeds in fraud for profit.(11)

In the 80s, Congress paved the way for the savings and loan scandal by loosening regulations, which cost taxpayers $160.1 billion. John McCain was one of the “Keating Five” rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising "poor judgment" for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, who was at the center of the scandal and convicted of fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy.

The history of the stock market reveals a transition from investments in real companies producing tangible, measurable products and services toward “financial instruments” of an increasingly speculative nature. Electronic money, borrowed and loaned into existence, flowing through cyberspace, can wreak havoc and collapse entire nations’ economies. In the 90s the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) was devised to ensure the ability of speculators and multinational corporations to move capital in and out of countries without governmental involvement or public interest safeguards.(12) Recognizing the dangers of this agreement to the interests of people everywhere, civil society organized global resistance via the Internet to defeat the MAI.

The 90s also witnessed major consolidation of the mass media, the frenzy of speculation in the high-tech industry, and the development and expansion of Internet commerce. New technologies permitted local, national, and international communications and organizing to occur, which profoundly challenged the credibility and legitimacy of established governments, corporations, and the corporate press.

Global resistance to corporate globalization broke through the mainstream media barrier in the US in 1999 in Seattle, Washington, when tens of thousands of protestors tried to peacefully shut down a World Trade Organization meeting. The first Indymedia.org website was created specifically for that protest to share information from the point of view of activists. Since then the Indymedia network has grown to span the globe—particularly in those cities where international protests have been organized, the main website is accessible in eight languages.

Under President Clinton in 1999 and the leadership of Senator Phil Gramm (now co-chair of the McCain campaign), Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which removed Depression-era laws separating banking, insurance, and brokerage activities and helped pave the way for the next wave of financial integration and fraud. In late 2000 when Gramm chaired the Senate Banking Committee, he pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act—which prohibited federal agencies from regulating financial products called credit default swaps, which have been used to back up the mortgage-based securities. The credit default swaps are the major reason for the 54 trillion dollar liabilities that are threatening financial institutions worldwide.13 (After the legislation passed, the Swiss bank UBS purchased American institutions. UBS then hired Gramm as a lobbyist and paid him over $750,000. UBS alone issues over $18 billion in subprime mortgages.)(14)

Throughout history there has been a struggle in all societies between a ruling class and the many who are not so privileged. Toynbee noted that the world struggle takes place between a few vested interests and social justice. There has always been a struggle between tyrants and ordinary people, where the people have made some gains and have also had setbacks.

Social movements are born when public myths are shattered, societal secrets are revealed, and people realize that powerholders are acting in violation of deeply held values. In the current era, the Internet has allowed for the increasingly rapid transmission of information challenging powerholders, institutions, and cultural myths.

Social movements are collective actions that alert, educate, and mobilize the public to redress social problems or grievances. With all the problems confronting humanity there are innumerable social movements, which have evolved and learned from one another. At times they have come together in increasingly powerful coalitions. Professor and author Anthony Hall has called them “the fourth world,”(15) and others refer to them as the “anti-corporate globalization movement” or the “global justice movement.”

In January of 2001 while the World Economic Forum was meeting in Switzerland, thousands of people from hundreds of countries met at the first World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, Brazil, a convergence of social movements. Their points of agreement included opposition to the policies of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO; opposition to militarism, corporate globalization, and environmental destruction; and support for public participation in decision-making processes, and for the respect for people and life over profits. Social movements are an evolutionary force that pushes people to live up to their ideals and values and enables people to exercise their collective power.

When people believe that power flows downward from those at the top of institutions towards the helpless at the bottom of the pyramid, tyranny rules. Most people believe in this model. Under this model, change can be achieved only by appealing to elites, using persuasion. However, when people discover their own power and belief in democracy—that government should be “of, by, and for the people”—power flows from them through institutions to powerholders and public servants. True democratic power comes from the bottom, results in social progress, and powerholders and policies are changed to meet popular social demands.(16)

The strategy of the powerholders is not to broadcast the truth about their beliefs, actions, policies, and programs. They know who benefits from the unfair distribution of benefits and costs within the existing system. They must keep their actual policies hidden from the public, because they rightly fear that the majority would rebel if they knew the truth. Powerholders habitually use myths, slogans, and rhetoric to sell their policies and programs to the public.

One of the great American myths that is promulgated by powerholders is the idea that we have a watchdog press. Over 3,000 people attended the last two National Conferences on Media Reform, primarily because of their deep concern about the failure of the traditional media. Lord Northcliffe said, “News is something that someone wants suppressed; all the rest is advertising.”

Colossal crimes have been committed and then masked by the media for centuries. But the larger pattern in this era of information—including names, dates, evidence, and various kinds of documentation—is coming to light at a staggering rate, beyond the capacity of any one individual to absorb, read, process, and disseminate all the details. In turn the information is gradually reaching the most heavily propagandized target audience—the American public, who are increasingly losing faith in their government, the war, the Congress, and the financial system.

As Aung San Suu Kyi wrote, "It is not power that corrupts, but fear—fear of losing power and fear of the scourge of those who wield it."

Fear, war, and terror are routinely used to shut down rational thinking processes—a tactic that Naomi Klein outlines in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism(17) (as well as in the video(18) ). Klein fails to recognize, however, that 9/11 was designed to terrorize Americans and the world into going along with the bogus “War on Terror,” to forget about the missing $2.3 trillion on the Department of Defense books(19), the stolen election(20) , the evidence destroyed in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s offices in World Trade Center 7(21), to not even notice the massive insider trading(22), and then to permit a giant escalation in the military budget and the construction of the surveillance industry. The plunge in the stock market and the “apparent attack” on America’s financial center also prompted the Fed to lower interest rates, which helped the housing market—and Bush encouraged folks to “go shopping.”

The best historical parallel to 9/11 would be the Reichstag fire, which Hitler used to vilify and target “communists” and pass the Enabling Act (similar to the PATRIOT Act), before launching wars of aggression. The PATRIOT Act was mirrored by legislation passed in Canada, Australia, and the UK, severely eroding civil rights and granting more power to governments to chill dissent—to monitor and crack down on those they considered a threat.

With the bust of the dot com bubble, speculative money went into real estate, housing, and derivatives(23) . Congress and the Bush administration changed laws and regulations to lure people into borrowing money, purchasing homes, and investing their savings in the 21st century Ponzi schemes. Elliot Spitzer was vilified by the press the day before he wrote an article naming Bush as the "Predator Lenders' Partner in Crime," saying

“In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act pre-empting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. …

"Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye."(24)

Close scrutiny of powerholders running the government, institutions, and corporations reveals conflicting loyalties and economic interests. Legislators in fact represent the millionaires and billionaires who fund them and who continually rewrite the rules in their own favor and have decided that the Constitution is obsolete.

The unfolding financial crisis has been arriving in wave after destructive wave. People have lost their homes, their jobs, their savings, their health, their marriages, their kids, and finally their hope.

The housing bubble began to burst when home prices in the US began to decline in March and April of 2007. The IMF warned of risks to global financial markets. Bear Stearns was in trouble in June 2007 because of its mortgage-backed securities. In the summer of 2007 German banks were in trouble and foreclosures in the US almost doubled. In September 2007 there was a run on Northern Rock, which the British government nationalized, and the Fed began to drop interest rates to help the housing market. In January 2008, UBS reported $18 billion in write-downs due to US real estate exposure. In February, Fannie Mae reported a $3.55 billion loss.(25)

In March, however, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department directed money towards the 85-year-old investment bank Bear Stearns, via JP Morgan(26) and $200 billion went to prop up Fannie Mae. By April the IMF projected $945 billion in losses. In June housing possessions doubled again, and the FBI announced the arrest of over 400 people charged with mortgage fraud, including two senior managers of the failed Bear Stearns Hedge Funds.(27) In July Congress passed the Foreclosures Prevention Act, which was a $33 billion hand-out to those who helped create the problem, according to a report by the Laborers' International Union of North America. Under the bill's little-publicized "carry-back" provision, builders would get billions in tax breaks and the 15 largest corporate homebuilders, who made $16 billion in profits on $100 billion in revenues, would receive a third of the benefits.(28)

In September 2008, the Fed, in an unprecedented move, lent $85 billion to the American International Group (AIG), the nation’s largest insurance company, which also handled credit default swaps and suffered losses from its subprime mortgage-backed securities holdings.(29) Then Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and Bank of America devoured Merrill Lynch. Soon there was a run on money market funds, and short selling of financial stocks was suspended globally. Bush made a speech acknowledging that there was a serious crisis, and backed Paulson’s bailout plea.

There were only a few voices in Congress that dared to challenge the current bailout of the speculators so intimately involved in created the current financial crisis. Anyone could look up Henry Paulson on the internet to discover his ties to Goldman Sachs, but these ties were not emphasized in the mainstream media. According to Wikipedia notes:

“Paulson was Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon from 1970 to 1972… He joined Goldman Sachs in 1974… He became a partner in 1982. From 1983 until 1988, Paulson led the Investment Banking group for the Midwest Region, and became managing partner of the Chicago office in 1988. From 1990 to November 1994, he was co-head of Investment Banking, then, Chief Operating Officer from December 1994 to June 1998; eventually succeeding Jon Corzine (now Governor of New Jersey) as its chief executive. His compensation package, according to reports, was US$37 million in 2005, and US$16.4 million projected for 2006. His net worth has been estimated at over US$700 million. Paulson has personally built close relations with China during his career. In July 2008 it was reported by The Daily Telegraph that: "Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has intimate relations with the Chinese elite, dating from his days at Goldman Sachs when he visited the country more than 70 times. …

“There is increasing evidence that Paulson was influential with two U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairmen, William H. Donaldson and Christopher Cox, in receiving restraint in the Commission's exercise of oversight requirements. In 2004…the Commission agreed unanimously to release the major investment houses from the net capital rule, the requirement that their brokerages hold reserve capital that limited their leverage and risk exposure. The complaint that was put forth by the investment banks was of increasingly onerous regulatory requirements—in this case, not U.S. regulator oversight, but European Union regulation of the foreign operations of US investment groups. In the immediate lead-up to the decision, EU regulators also acceded to US pressure, and agreed not to scrutinize foreign firms' reserve holdings if the SEC agreed to do so instead. The 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, however, put the parent holding company of each of the big American brokerages beyond SEC oversight. In order for the agreement to go ahead, the investment banks lobbied for a decision that would allow "voluntary" inspection of their parent and subsidiary holdings by the SEC.

“During this repeal of the net capital rule, SEC Chairman Donaldson agreed to the establishment of a risk management office that would monitor signs of future problems. This office was eventually dismantled by Chairman Cox, after discussions with Paulson. According to the New York Times, ’While other financial regulatory agencies criticized a blueprint by Mr. Paulson, the [new] Treasury secretary, that proposed to reduce their stature — and that of the S.E.C. — Mr. Cox did not challenge the plan, leaving it to three former Democratic and Republican commission chairmen to complain that the blueprint would neuter the agency.’ Only in late September 2008, Chairman Cox and the other Commissioners agreed to end the 2004 program of voluntary regulation.”

With the unregulated credit default swaps posing enormous liabilities to the financial institutions that dwarf the global economy, Paulson’s allegiances to Goldman Sachs and AIG will help determine which institutions will fail—or escape, survive, and profit—in the current turmoil.(30) & (30B)

Henry Paulson asked for and received over $700 billion in taxpayer money with little or no oversight as to who will actually get the money. It is clear that it won’t be going to Main Street, and it is more than likely to go to Paulson’s Wall Street and foreign friends.

Ohio Representative Marcy Kaptur spoke out bravely against the bill, explaining precisely how it was being rushed through Congress(31) , and Dennis Kucinich condemned it as well. Their token resistance was swept aside, even as Representative Brad Sherman pointed out the fear mongering and panic pressure placed on Congress to push it through.(32) The fear that was generated by insiders and the media, as well as some token pork, helped to get the bill passed on Friday, October 3, 2008. Democrats, Republicans, and both presidential hopefuls were behind the bailout.

Amongst Obama’s advisers are Franklin Raines, who was a chairman and chief executive officer at Fannie Mae; and Tim Howard, who was the chief financial officer of Fannie Mae; and Jim Johnson, who was an executive at Lehman Brothers and later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. Howard was forced to retire when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting activities. The books ran afoul of generally accepted accounting principles for four years, and Fannie Mae had to reduce its surplus by $9 billion. The Government filed suit against Raines and Howard when the scandal became clear(33). The court ordered Raines to return $50 million he received in bonuses based on the misstated Fannie Mae profits. The government investigation determined that "Chief Financial Officer Tim Howard failed to provide adequate oversight to key control and reporting functions within Fannie Mae." Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004. Howard's golden parachute was estimated at $20 million. Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 million in benefits. A look at the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's May 2006 report on mismanagement and corruption inside Fannie Mae reveals that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million." Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of Fannie Mae. Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.(34)

Any close scrutiny of the financial ties of major politicians—particularly those in office such as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pelosi, and Feinstein—reveal major conflicts of interest between the politicians and the military, oil, and pharmaceutical industries. At the highest levels, however, there is no accountability. Laws are meaningless to these people. They have the power and influence to pass murderous legislation that enriches and empowers them and their cronies and threatens and impoverishes the rest of us, all of this veiled by a subservient corporate press that bestows upon them an aura of legitimacy. Within government agencies there is corruption, fraud, and the persecution—rather than protection—of whistle-blowers.

When Congress voted $87 billion to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, some of that money was earmarked to suppress dissent in the US. In 2003, thousands of protestors gathered in Miami to oppose the negotiations of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Pre-emptive arrests, violent violation of civil rights, brutal treatment of innocent medics, and criminalization of dissent became known as “the Miami model.” The militarization of the police and Homeland Security’s targeting of anti-war and peace activists have continued and expanded since then—as seen most recently in the protests at the Democratic and Republican Conventions where even the regular press was arrested, and organizers were arrested and charged with “terrorism.”

There is a battle going on—a clash of worldviews over what is true, legal, and moral; over who is a terrorist, and who is serving humanity; over who has the right to live, and who has the right or duty to jail, kill, or torture anyone. Every individual will have to decide for themselves what is true and what is legitimate—what is best for themselves, their families, their country, and the whole planet.

The strategy of all social movements is to convince the public that a problem exists and that policies must be changed, and to exercise the people power that resides within themselves into a force that finds solutions to commonly recognized problems.

The perpetrators of 9/11 had a different strategy. Their strategy was to terrify the American people into silence and submission, then bully the Congress into nearly unlimited funding for war and a greatly expanded surveillance industry. The perpetrators of 9/11 used a BIG LIE to sell a “bogus protection racket” to their victims—to institutionalize under the guise of “National/Homeland Security” a greater concentration of wealth and power into fewer hands. Their tools were violence, fear, criminal fraud, manipulating the financial markets, and selling it all to the American people through the megaphone of the mainstream media.

Cheney, like Napoleon, believes that you don’t have to suppress a truth—just delay it until it no longer matters. There are a growing number of people who are challenging the lies, especially through the Internet. It is apparent that those in power are very much afraid of the Internet, of people’s ability to share information and communicate so that they can organize in unprecedented ways using emerging technologies, or simply gather together in a public space where free speech is still possible.

The deeply held values, symbols, beliefs, sensibilities and traditions that are important to the public are being violated today by the power elite. The majority of people are against the war, torture, and the bailout of Wall Street. Those in power depend on the public to be stupid, uninformed, disengaged, apathetic, cynical, powerless, and silent. Social movements are dependent on empowered, engaged, informed people at every level of society to uphold the values and principles that are being violated by powerholders and their policies. Will the American people continue to wake up and begin to exercise more control over the US government to force changes in policy?

A major cause of social problems is the concentration of political, economic, and military power in the hands of relatively few people. An informed, empowered, and politicized population is required to resolve today’s problems and to establish a just, peaceful, sustainable world for all. Political and economic power ultimately rests with the majority population; rulers can only rule with the consent and acquiescence of the people. Where people put their time, energy, and money has a greater impact on society and the world than who they vote for. Elections have been stolen for decades; only an awakened citizenry can oversee and ensure honest elections.

The most important issue is the age-old struggle between the majority of people and the individual and institutional powerholders to determine whether society will be based on the authoritarian model—where power flows from the top down—or the “people power” model of genuine participatory democracy.

Kevin Barrett expressed the following in a talk entitled “A Folklorist Looks at 9/11 ‘Conspiracy Theories’” (folk meaning “the people,” as opposed to the “rulers and the press” who in the past have authoritatively defined “event/reality”):

“Marshall McLuhan’s famous line “the medium is the message” could describe the way the 9/11 Truth movement is an artifact of the Internet, and the radically-enhanced folk-communications it has brought. Thanks to digital audiovisuals, email and the world-wide web, the folk are now a leg up on their would-be manipulators, those well-paid professionals in corporate media, public relations, marketing, and psychological warfare or psy-ops, whose collective job is to reify and manipulate their fellow human beings.

“It is one thing for the content of informal, non-institutional, “folk” communication to subvert institutional authority. It is another and more significant thing for the very medium of folk communication to radically shift in a way that empowers the folk and disempowers the institutions. And that is what has happened. The world has been turned upside-down as the old oral-transmission grapevine has gone digital…

“Today’s digitally-enhanced subversives and skeptics can spread large numbers of copies of audio, video and photographic evidence, along with an unlimited amount of writing, for pennies. This digital awakening may turn out to be our second post-Gutenberg revolution in half a century. Its importance may rival the emergence of writing, which created hierarchical societies of kings, priests and scribes; with the invention of the printing press, which created the kind of mass-literate societies we call “democratic”; and with the invention of television, which McLuhan suggests created a global village of creeping Orwellian fascism. 9/11, in this view, was the last gasp of television as a means of mind-control via mass hypnosis, while the 9/11 Truth controversies may represent the birth pangs of the new, digitally-enhanced democracy.”

It is sobering to know that if the world’s population was reduced to 100 representatives, only 1 would have a computer, or have attended college, and he would have more wealth than all the others and be from the United States. While 70 percent of American homes may have access to the Internet, they are not representative of the world. However, an enlightened American people would be a grave danger to the advancement of the American Empire. We are uniquely responsible and able to thwart or advance the aspirations of the US oligarchy. We are also directly under attack by that oligarchy, who view us as a threat and are trying to criminalize dissent.

The financial crisis that faces America and the world today was as orchestrated as the events of 9/11. Similar to what transpired after 9/11, it is likely that the financial crisis will be used to further concentrate wealth and power, crush dissent, criminalize larger and larger numbers of people, trash civil liberties, and generally replace the “rule of law” with the “rule of fear.”

There is another possibility, however, which we the people can promote. We can join together to speak up, organize, and challenge the lies, crimes, and illegitimacy of the powerholders and corporations that threaten the well-being of the people of the world. We can create and nurture new organizations to fulfill real needs and aspirations. This is already taking place and can be seen in the rise of nonprofit organizations over the past decade. Ignored by the corporate media, Ron Paul, Cynthia McKinney, and Ralph Nader have raised key issues that the corporate-anointed candidates won’t discuss. The public must search the Internet for the statements of these courageous challengers to the oligarchy, because their views are ignored, marginalized, or dismissed in the corporate press—but they nonetheless provide a rallying cry for people looking for true change. At a recent press conference, the third-party candidates clearly represented majority opinions and interests, far better than McCain or Obama.(35)

Repression, reform, revolution or renaissance?

When revolutions occur simultaneously in many different areas, the transformation of society can be called a renaissance. We are witnessing changes happening at a rapid pace in a multitude of areas, and few can begin to keep up with the new technologies and research. As traditional power structures are threatened, new possibilities and synergies are emerging. If the traditional banking system or the dollar collapses, money will be reinvented at the local, regional, national, and probably international levels.

Mike Nickerson, author of Life, Money, & Illusion: Living on Earth as If We Want to Stay, wrote:

“An alternative to panicking when GDP stops growing is to view it as a sign of maturity. Human activity cannot expand forever on our finite planet. Fuel prices, climate change and the sub-prime mortgage crisis are all symptoms of one cause. When we stopped growing as individuals, it was not the end of the world. Indeed, for most of us, life had scarcely begun before physical maturity. Even as physical growth ended, we became better informed, more comfortable in ourselves and we developed the skills and relationships that define our lives. The same can be true for civilization.”

The convergence of various crises—including the financial system, peak oil, climate change, population growth, resource depletion, and mass extinctions—is forcing humanity to collectively recognize its limits and mature as a species, simply to survive.(37)

In order to behave maturely, wisely, and responsibly—and to make wise rational decisions—people need to know what is true, what is real.

Mike Nickerson has been championing the Genuine Progress Index to provide more accurate information about how people are affecting the planet and one another. If economic indicators were aligned with universal values such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, economists would ignore the marketplace and concern themselves with the health and well-being of the environment, the health and well-being of every person, and whether the basic human needs for food, water, shelter, clothing, and education were being met.

One of the heftiest charges against members of the Bush Administration is their attack upon science.(38) There is ample evidence that they have ordered agencies to be silent about their findings, or to fudge data to suit political purposes and shape public opinion. Only Bush science, as exemplified in the NIST report, could explain the collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings at free-fall speed as due to fire alone. Hundreds of independent scientists, architects, and engineers have rejected the conclusions of the NIST report. The scientific evidence indicates that two planes could not have shredded three steel-framed buildings, but that controlled demolition does explain their rapid disintegration.

It is increasingly challenging to evaluate scientific studies without knowing who has funded them, and for what particular purpose. Researchers whose findings challenge government or corporate objectives are vilified and lose their funding. Citizen-supported scientific research and data collection whose intention and purpose is clearly in the interests of the health and well-being of people and their environment—whose data can be shared, checked, verified, and corroborated by others in a transparent manner—will ultimately gain the widest acceptance.

Satyagraha, "soul force" or “the force of truth,” pioneered by Gandhi, has inspired the social movements of today. According to Schopenhauer, “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

The individual and human journey also passes through stages. As proposed by Abraham Maslow in his classic study Toward a Psychology of Being, healthy people outgrow the self-centered need for material acquisition and find greater joy and purpose in more expansive activities—such as developing friendships, being of service to others, expressing creativity, and joining together with others to solve problems.

The deliberate infantilization of the public and the manipulation of the public mind has contributed to the current crisis in values, where people seem to be concerned only for themselves and are cynical about what is happening in the world.

The cure lies in the maturation of our species. The times that we live in are calling to us to grow up, individually and collectively. We need to develop a greater understanding of ourselves and our world, to develop our talents and skills to make this a better world. Despite the dangers and challenges of the time we live in, we can find meaning and joy through joining together in the search for truth, peace, justice, and, freedom.

As Gandhi and others have demonstrated, the truth, combined with love and compassion, will set us free. As we work together to pursue the truth and expand our awareness, we are lifting the veil and awakening from a media-induced trance so that we can more clearly see how we have allowed our power to be taken from us. This knowledge will empower us to reform the outmoded structures that are so oppressive and to create new systems that truly serve the needs of the people and the planet for current and future generations.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Mike Nickerson is the author of Life, Money & Illusion- Living on Earth as if we want to stay. He first encountered "sustainability" as a co-director of the Institute for the Study of Cultural Evolution. The organization's study of the aspirations and concerns of citizens' groups culminated in 1974 with the point form summary, now known as the Guideposts for a Sustainable Future. The background detail of the study was published in 1977 under the title Change the World I Want to Stay On. In 1990 Mr. Nickerson completed production of the Guideposts for a Sustainable Future video along with an accompanying workshop kit. In 1993 his second book- Planning for Seven Generations was published in paperback.

Currently Mike coordinates the Sustainability Project and an initiative to establish a Genuine Progress Index for Canada. He lives near the village of Lanark, Ontario and supports his interest in cultural evolution doing custom woodwork. He would like to spend more time growing things.

Recently he wrote:

A Silver Lining to the Economic Downturn

An alternative to panicking when GDP stops growing is to view it as a sign of maturity.

Human activity cannot expand forever on our finite planet. An economy growing at 3% a year doubles its size every 24 years. Centuries of such growth have brought us to a mature size. As with individual maturity, there comes a time for societies to stop growing and to take responsibly for their strength and impacts on others.

As a mature species, we have two responsibilities to Earth and ultimately, to ourselves. The first is to live within the availability of natural resources. Global production of oil has stalled for three years at about 85 million barrels a day, yet demand continues to increase. This results in rising prices. The increased cost is reminding us all about how dependent we are on this particular resource.

While fossil fuels are a well-known resource issue, there is also cause for concern with fresh water, forests, fish, soil fertility and other resources.

Our second responsibility is to keep our waste within tolerable bounds. Climate change is a direct result of human activity having grown to where our C02 emissions are overwhelming the ability of oceans and forests to absorb it, leaving it to accumulate in the atmosphere. What is the logic of policies aimed at doubling our size, when current activities, at the present population level, have already brought us to the edge of climate chaos?

Climate change is not the only issue related to tolerance. Respiratory problems, many cancers and other illnesses, which result from the accumulation of manufactured toxins, are also wake up calls.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis rivals the price of fuel and climate change in terms of public concern. It too can be linked to confrontation with planetary limits.

Over the centuries, the expansion of our growth-dependent type of monetary system has inflated it to gargantuan proportions. In North America, to accomplish 3% growth, over four hundred billion dollars in new business has to take place in the present year. This is over and above the fifteen trillion dollars worth of transactions already taking place. Large amounts of new money has to be loaned into existence to accommodate this expansion.

Before humans filled the Earth, there were areas of untapped natural resources, from which we could produce things of tangible value that people were willing and able to pay for - businesses, houses, tools, food and the like - to back up an exponentially expanding money supply. By the 1980s, it was becoming increasingly difficult to produce enough real wealth to do the job. Following "junk bonds," and the DotCom bubble, bidding up real estate became a primary means for expanding the money supply. When that bubble threatened to burst after 9/11, interest rates were dropped to almost nothing and mortgages were offered to people with no down payments and little credit worthiness. At hundreds of thousands of dollars each, great quantities of money were loaned into circulation. It appeared to work, until energy driven inflation prompted interest rate increases that many sub-prime mortgage holders were unable to pay.

These problems indicate that the time has come for a fundamental change. Fuel prices, climate change and the sub-prime mortgage crisis are all symptoms of one cause. They will not effectively be resolved until the fact that human activity has grown to stretch planetary limits is addressed. We cannot grow out of problems that result from our size.

When we stopped growing as individuals, it was not the end of the world. Indeed, for most of us, life had scarcely begun before physical maturity. Even as physical growth ended, we became better informed, more comfortable in ourselves and we developed the skills and relationships that define our lives. The same can be true for civilization.

Among the first things societies can do, as we acknowledge our maturity, is to shift investment into education and health care. Unlike cars and expanding highway networks, which are resource and waste intensive, education and health care (particularly care at the preventative level) consist almost entirely of knowledge and good will.

Another step will be to revive local, small-scale agriculture. Food produced in this way requires less fuel and other natural resources and has been shown to produce more food per acre, of a higher nutritional quality, than industrial scale farming.

Investing in education, health care and local food security makes sense, if what we want is a healthy, well fed, educated population. With the present commitment to make money grow, however, such goals appear self-serving. Our advanced size requires that all our efforts be focused on monetary expansion.

Do we want to grow money or food? As long as our goal is defined as making the GDP grow, efficiency will be measured entirely in terms of what makes the most money. Even though industrial agriculture produces less food per acre, than small-scale local framing, it does produce a greater crop of investment capital. Money borrowed for heavy equipment, fuel, pesticides and fertilizer earns interest and, driven by payment schedules, stimulates efforts to maximize financial return. Local farming, on the other hand, contributes relatively little to the immediate need of expanding capital. It tends to put money into the pockets of farmers who, rather than investing it, are more likely to buy food, shelter and education for their children.

When industrialization began, it was recognized that mechanized, mass production could provide products at a fraction of the cost of hand-made goods. The main obstacle to applying the industrial process to all manner of goods was a shortage of capital. Because it costs a lot of up-front money to build an industry, our system of mutual provision (the economy) was designed to encourage the expansion of capital. However, now that the world is awash in so much capital that, a continuous stream of speculative bubbles is necessary to give it places to invest, it is time for another goal.

As we mature as a society, the things that indicate well-being change. Measuring how much a baby grows is a good measure of its health; it is not an effective way to measure the well-being of an adult. If we want to resolve today's multiple crises, we need more detailed information.

At present, if there is a natural disaster, toxic spill or a health epidemic, the costs of dealing with the problems are added to the GDP, giving the false impression that we are better off. While more money might be flowing, life is degraded by such things. If we were to measure social and environmental factors of well-being with the same authority and enthusiasm with which we measure GDP, much of the confusion would be avoided. A Genuine Progress Index (GPI) would provide a broader spectrum of information, enabling the costs and benefits of different activities to be assessed with greater accuracy. Along with the traditional economic indicators, accounts about air quality and health issues, for example, would reveal that the hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually on medicine to relieve respiratory suffering is more a sign of distress than of economic progress.

A legitimized indicator that shows whether social and environmental factors are improving or deteriorating would create the awareness needed to stimulate serious actions toward solving the problems.

By identifying resource draw-down, pollution, and disruptions to communities, with a GPI, external factors would enter the picture. Presently externalized costs are not included in the price of goods. When such costs are added to production costs, those goods that are socially and environmentally friendly would be less expensive and those that cause problems would cost more. Both consumers and producers would then be inclined toward responsible products.

Taking the additional step of shifting the skill, ingenuity and persuasive effort that is presently applied toward engineering obsolescence, and, instead, using it to design durable, easily repaired goods, and to reclaim pride in objects that have long served us, could cut up to 50% off of our material and energy consumption and consequent impacts.

One final shift - from looking for fulfillment in material goods, to seeking it in friendships, knowledge, appreciation, service, music, art, sport and adventure - would complete the transformation. Coupled with environmentally responsible agriculture, such a change could reduce our impacts to practically nothing. That is, the real costs of maintaining well-being for humans, in terms of the ability of Earth to sustain life over time, would be negligible.

By finding satisfaction in the richness of being human, we could change the image of our species from that of a potentially terminal blight on the Earth, to something much more suiting to our position amidst the life of this planet. As a mature species, we could reward three billion years of evolution by adding laughter, love, awe and wonder to a deep appreciation for the incredible accomplishments by which life has brought us to this point.

While arguments persist about oil supplies, climate change and the possibility of perpetual economic expansion, we are well advised to acknowledge the ultimate finiteness of Earth and accept responsibility. Policies intent on expanding until the last possible moment will almost certainly be followed by disaster.

Human ingenuity is more than sufficient to provide food, shelter and other necessities without having to double the total of all our activities every 24 years. It is a Question of Direction. We need to choose between the goal of perpetual growth and that of long-term well-being.

We celebrate when our children grow. If an adult continues to grow like a child, however, it is cause for serious concern. Developing a healthy steady-state economy is no more frightening than the prospect of becoming adult is for a teenager. The silver lining to this economic downturn is the opportunity it offers to grow up and take responsibility for our impacts. It can be done.

With the financial system in crisis, it is not time to panic, but to realize that we need to recognize the systemic problems that we face and redesign that system so that it serves rather than threatens life.

Nicholas has been working as a translator (German to English), editor, reporter, researcher, copywriter, project manager, interpreter, language teacher and consultant for clients in publishing, media, business, industry, finance, government, academia, health care and the arts. His invaluable, unpaid contributions to the movement have rarely been publicly acknowledged.

Nicholas and I will be looking at the 9/11 Truth Movement and its evolution over the years, the missed chances, botched opportunities, surprising successes, growth, where we are now, and strategically what we can do, now, at this moment in time, where the focus, message might have the most impact and bear the most fruit.

Professor Hall is the founding coordinator and associate professor, globalization studies, University of Lethbridge. Perhaps a brief glimpse of his work can be garnered from this short description of his upcoming book-

Earth Into Property: Aboriginal History and the Making of Global Capitalismby Anthony J. Hall

Earth into Property explores more than five centuries of imperial and anti-imperial globalization, culminating in the lies and crimes permeating the so-called War on Terror. In describing the genesis of global capitalism, Anthony J. Hall emphasizes the connections linking the genocidal Indian wars in the Americas with Europe's colonization of Indigenous peoples throughout Africa and Asia. The global operations of the military-industrial complex and the national security state emerged from the ongoing appropriation and corporate privatization of Aboriginal lands and resources on capitalism's moving frontiers. This network of US-based corporations and government agencies continues to draw heavily on the fascist heritage of Nazi anti-Communism in its drive to universalize and police a single worldwide regime of unjust property relations.

Hall contrasts the militaristic monoculture of global capitalism with the realm where many political economies thrive in the biocultural diversity of the Fourth World. Hall finds the inspirational sources of this ongoing movement for global decolonization in the liberation struggles of Tecumseh, Toussaint L'Overature, Sitting Bull, Annie Besant, Gandhi, W.E.B. Du Bois, Che Guevara, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Rigoberta Menchu, and Hugo Chavez ­ to mention only a few. In his sweeping and original interpretation, Halls weaves together a narrative of hope extending from the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to the Atlantic Charter of 1941 to the founding at Bandung Indonesia of the Non-Aligned Movement. Hall advances a conception of Aboriginal history that gives all-important historical context to the extensions of the Indian wars in the global resource grabs currently conducted in the name of the bogus War on Terror.

Anthony J. Hall's Earth into Property picks up where Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine leaves off. As Hall demonstrates, the spread of "disaster capitalism" has been going on for centuries, not mere decades, on those resource frontiers where Indigenous peoples have been exterminated, dispossessed, and subjugated in the name of earlier versions of the War on Terror.

We'll be looking at 9/11, as one facet of a much larger struggle, and the truth movement's potential to turn the tide.

[During the show, Anthony J. Hall incorrectly credited me with coming up with the "9/11 Truth" term, but I did not. I did, however, coin the phrase "9/11 Truth Movement." Carol Brouillet]

Nicholas has been working as a translator (German to English), editor, reporter, researcher, copywriter, project manager, interpreter, language teacher and consultant for clients in publishing, media, business, industry, finance, government, academia, health care and the arts. His invaluable, unpaid contributions to the movement have rarely been publicly acknowledged.

Nicholas and I will be looking at the 9/11 Truth Movement and its evolution over the years, the missed chances, botched opportunities, surprising successes, growth, where we are now, and strategically what we can do, now, at this moment in time, where the focus, message might have the most impact and bear the most fruit.

Professor Hall is the founding coordinator and associate professor, globalization studies, University of Lethbridge. Perhaps a brief glimpse of his work can be garnered from this short description of his upcoming book-

Earth Into Property: Aboriginal History and the Making of Global Capitalismby Anthony J. Hall

Earth into Property explores more than five centuries of imperial and anti-imperial globalization, culminating in the lies and crimes permeating the so-called War on Terror. In describing the genesis of global capitalism, Anthony J. Hall emphasizes the connections linking the genocidal Indian wars in the Americas with Europe's colonization of Indigenous peoples throughout Africa and Asia. The global operations of the military-industrial complex and the national security state emerged from the ongoing appropriation and corporate privatization of Aboriginal lands and resources on capitalism's moving frontiers. This network of US-based corporations and government agencies continues to draw heavily on the fascist heritage of Nazi anti-Communism in its drive to universalize and police a single worldwide regime of unjust property relations.

Hall contrasts the militaristic monoculture of global capitalism with the realm where many political economies thrive in the biocultural diversity of the Fourth World. Hall finds the inspirational sources of this ongoing movement for global decolonization in the liberation struggles of Tecumseh, Toussaint L'Overature, Sitting Bull, Annie Besant, Gandhi, W.E.B. Du Bois, Che Guevara, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Rigoberta Menchu, and Hugo Chavez ­ to mention only a few. In his sweeping and original interpretation, Halls weaves together a narrative of hope extending from the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to the Atlantic Charter of 1941 to the founding at Bandung Indonesia of the Non-Aligned Movement. Hall advances a conception of Aboriginal history that gives all-important historical context to the extensions of the Indian wars in the global resource grabs currently conducted in the name of the bogus War on Terror.

Anthony J. Hall's Earth into Property picks up where Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine leaves off. As Hall demonstrates, the spread of "disaster capitalism" has been going on for centuries, not mere decades, on those resource frontiers where Indigenous peoples have been exterminated, dispossessed, and subjugated in the name of earlier versions of the War on Terror.

We'll be looking at 9/11, as one facet of a much larger struggle, and the truth movement's potential to turn the tide.

Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. is President of the Institute for Space and Security Studies, Executive Vice President of Millennium III Corporation, and retired Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church. The recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President's Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Republic Aviation Airpower Award, the Society of American Military Engineers' ROTC Medal of Merit (twice), the Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters, the Meritorious Service Medal, and numerous other awards, he is one of the country's foremost authorities on national security.

Colonel Bowman flew 101 combat missions as a fighter pilot in Vietnam and directed all the DoD “Star Wars” programs under presidents Ford and Carter. He has been an executive in both government and industry, and has chaired 8 major international conferences. Professor Bowman taught at 5 colleges and universities, serving as Department Head and Assistant Dean. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He has lectured at the National War College, the United Nations, Congressional Caucuses, the Academies of Science of six nations, and the House of Lords.

Dr. Bob Bowman ran for President in the Reform Party in 2000 and was the Democratic candidate for the US Congress from the 15th Congressional District of Florida in 2006. Bob and his wife of 51 years, Maggie, have 7 children and 21 grandchildren. He is currently on tour. Information about his organization- The Patriots and his schedule are posted on his website. He is in California, now and just spoke at a gathering with people from the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance, Santa Cruz and Paul Zarembka.

Michael Maxwell has had many experiences as a Senior Military Officer at the Pentagon Headquarters, in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, at the White House, at top-secret laboratories, in combat crew training, NATO activities in Europe, the US Congress, and elsewhere doing strategic decision-making analysis, technology forecasting, corporate marketing.

He has also worked with public interest groups [eg. Nader's Raiders] seeking to improve the integrity, efficient performance, and eco-wisdom future planning of Government and other institutions. He writes Screenplays, Novels, and a Column for smart, caring, brave, and intelligently fully informed readers and fellow citizens.

He is a founder of The REALLY SMART THINKING Foundation and Projects --- to significantly improve the USA's National Dialogues and some Global consensus items before it is too late.

Both men have had experience within the military which allow them to see 9/11 critically, and see through the cover story.

We will be discussing 9/11 and given their unique perspective into the functioning of the White House and the military, how the operation could have been carried out, the challenges of the moment, and where do we go from here.

Janice Matthews is the Executive Director of 911Truth.org. Janice was their outreach coordinator until September, 2005 when she became executive director. She is also co-founder of the now-archived 9/11 Visibility Project, and focuses on facilitating activism and encouraging ordinary people to become participants and leaders in their own lives and communities. She has a B.A. from the University of Kansas, half a masters in social welfare and extensive training in direct-entry midwifery. She is a mother of six, a Kansas City native and radical Christian, and is working now to create a more self-sufficient/interdependent lifestyle. Janice is outraged about issues facing military troops and veterans-- abuse/rape, 'depleted' uranium, 'immunizations,' lack of care and support received--resulting in suicides and hundreds of thousands of homeless veterans, the horrifying 'non-lethal' weaponry used by the US, and our current mainstream media (please, "become the media"!)and believes decentralized people's movements are our hope for successful, nonviolent change in America, as has so often been the case around the world.

Mike Berger is the Media Coordinator for 911Truth.org. Mike earned a degree in Sociology with a focus on human motivation, currently calls St. Louis home, is married, and owns a plastic recycling company and video production company. Born and raised in New York about 20 minutes from Manhattan, he enjoyed visiting Manhattan to watch the building of the World Trade Center complex. On September 11th, with family living and working in lower Manhattan, his cousin actually saw the first plane fly over his head while walking his dog. More than 14 months passed before Mike began to question the official story. Denial turned into curiosity after reading about significant purchases of put options on American and United airlines and several companies that occupied large portions of the WTC Towers, implying that identifiable parties may have profited from foreknowledge of the attacks. He began researching the critical issues surrounding the failure of government officials to perform their sworn duties and defend us from attack. After all, according to George Tenet, "the system was blinking red." What went wrong? Why were we so unprepared for the attacks in light of numerous, documented, specific warnings? Why have we not held a single person accountable at any level, considering the magnitude of these failures? More than two years of investigation resulted in a series of documentaries currently in production. The first, Improbable Collapse: The Demolition of Our Republic, examines how three steel-framed buildings collapsed on 9/11 when no steel framed building had ever collapsed from fire previously. Ever.

Erik Lawyeris the founding member of FirefightersFor911Truth.org. He is currently a full time firefighter, assigned to 3 Truck in the City of Seattle for the last 12 years. Before that he was with the City of Sacramento as a Firefighter Paramedic. He first began working in Emergency Services in 1988 in the Sacramento area with a 911 private paramedic ambulance company. He has 20 years experience in Emergency Services. He earned my pilot's license in 1987, and have been recreationally flying since. He graduated with a Bachelor's of Science in Mathematics from the University of California at Davis in 1993, with 2 years of elective Engineering courses, and a Minor in Psychology.

Erik wrote a moving account of his own shift in consciousness regarding 9/11 which prompted him to start Fire Fighters For 9/11 Truth entitled MAYDAY...MAYDAY...MAYDAY. Here's an excerpt:

I, like most Americans, remember exactly where I was when I saw the attacks and had the overwhelming urge to take action. I was shocked, outraged, scared and confused. I called my Battalion Chief and asked if Seattle would be sending any teams to help. I was a member of the MMST, and figured we would be needed and I wanted to know where to report. Due to the nature of the incident we were not called up, and instead USAR teams, including Seattle's, were sent.

I first visited Ground Zero in October of 2001 with several firefighters from Seattle. We went to pay our respect and show support. We raised money for our brother firehouses and attended the funerals of our fallen Brothers. I was deeply moved and humbled by the community support, the sheer enormity of the tragedy along with the courage and compassion of the FDNY "Brotherhood." Even though I listened to their stories for days, I cannot even begin to imagine the pain and tragedy they suffered on that day and the years to come. I vividly remember the anger I felt, the intense desire for vengeance, and the feelings of helplessness. I was relieved when the government identified the terrorists and satisfied that we were going to have a swift deliverance of "justice."

I've been a conservative my entire life; a registered Republican since I could vote. I am a self proclaimed Patriot with George Washington as one of my all time heroes. So when conspiracy theories quickly surfaced, and "Liberals" cried foul on the erosion of civil liberties, I chalked it up to their political beliefs and bitterness towards the Republican President. I read many debunking articles - including Popular Mechanics - and watched many debunking videos including, Farenhype 9/11. I was convinced that these "Liberals" were misinformed and were grasping at straws to discredit the "official" story. Like most people with strong opinions, instead of looking at all the facts, I was specifically looking for anything that supported my own beliefs. As soon as I discovered any inaccuracy in a conspiracy claim, I wrote it off. My father, a big city cop and Korean War veteran, loved to say, "don't confuse me with the facts, I have my mind made up!" Well, I had my mind made up. I told conspiracy theorists like my own Truck Officer, Lt. Earl Emerson, that they were insane if they thought anyone other than the terrorists did this. Heck, we have ID cards, security camera videos, Bin Laden confession tapes - how much clearer did they need it? The years went on and I was satisfied in my beliefs. I even believed these "Wackos" that doubted the "official" story were distracting our country from focusing on the real threat of terrorism...

Fast forward to March of 2008. A great friend of mine with a Business degree from West Point, as conservative and non-conspiratorial as they get, came over one night to talk about what he saw happening in the economy. He provided some disconcerting evidence that we as a nation are at risk of entering into another depression; he pointed out historical parallels where other countries, such as Germany, suffered economic collapse. THAT was my eye opener. I became obsessed researching things such as economies, who is in control of currencies, what causes depressions, who profits during war, etc. So many things kept pointing to 9/11. Another one of my dad's favorite quotes was, "believe half of what you see and none of what you hear." So, I looked at both sides and quickly noticed a pattern. On one side, the general media ignores some of the most compelling evidence that contradicts the "official" story...

When I voiced my new opinion and concerns most of my friends listened. I think because they were shocked that a staunch Conservative could have such a major shift, or because they thought I had lost my mind and wanted to diagnose the cause. Curiously, some became angry at my new questions and actually thought I was supporting Terrorists with my concerns. Being a part of that same mindset myself only a few weeks ago, and then having a major shift in consciousness, really shook me to the core. What has happened to our collective consciousness that we believe anyone who doubts the "official" story or what the government tells us is an enemy? Anyone who asks for the Truth is labeled a "Wacko" or "Terrorist Sympathizer?" What has happened to us? Are we not founded on Freedom of Speech and taught to check our Government?...

To be honest, I was asleep at the wheel, and relied on what I was being told by mainstream media. The same media whose parent corporations, are some of the largest suppliers of weapons in this war. Before this "awakening" I had no idea the extent of our civil liberties that had been eroded in the name of Terrorism. I had never really wrapped my brain around what legalized torture means. I had always claimed America was noble. Just look at how we treated POW's during WWII and Vietnam compared to our enemies. That separated us. We were setting the example of Human Rights to the rest of the world. Sure, you'll always have individuals that will take things too far, but Government sponsored torture? What has happened to our country? What kind of example are we setting for our children, and the world? You would be interested to learn how many of our own rights have been stripped away recently. Look up the Military Commissions Act of 2006, John Warner Defense Authorization Act, Homegrown Terrorism Act, Presidential Directive 51. It is amazing the rights we have all lost in the past couple of years and very little is covered by the U.S. media.

After discovering this, I applied the "common sense" test that my Grandfather always said wasn't so common. Why would a government so aggressively suppress truth and blatantly destroy evidence if there was nothing to hide? Why has every testimony from sworn government and military officials that points to "prior knowledge" been stricken from the 9/11 Commission Report? How did paper business cards, cloth bandanas, and plastic ID's that implicate the terrorists survive so neatly through jet fueled fireballs hot enough to destroy titanium and steel? I've seen bodies burned beyond recognition, yet I have never found one that was wearing unburned clothing. These questions alone are enough to make me risk everything for a real investigation and accounting...

When I truly realized the enormity of the effect 9/11 has had on our Rights, our Economy, our Beliefs, our Fears, our Intolerances and our Government - I felt fear, then anger, then the need to take action. Bill Chickering said it best, "Anger is a very appropriate and necessary response to an injustice. But stand back now; the truth, clearly spoken, is always your best weapon. Calmly spoken, it can burn a hole through the hardest heart." When I realized the extent of the force and attitudes working to silence those who peacefully ask questions, demand answers, and seek truth, it became clear to me that our Country is in serious trouble and I must now stand alongside those Patriots who seek Truth and Constitutional Restoration.

Richard Gage, AIA is the founding member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (ae911Truth.org). He has been a practicing Architect for 20 years and has worked on most types of building construction including numerous fire-proofed steel-framed buildings. He is employed with a San Francisco Bay Area architecture firm and has most recently performed Construction Administration services for a new $120M High School campus including a $10M steel-framed Gymnasium. Currently he is working on the Design Development for a very large mixed use urban project with 1.2M sq.ft. of retail and 320K sq.ft. of mid-rise office space — altogether about 1,200 tons of steel framing.

He has been one of the most tireless speakers on the issue of 9/11 truth, and more specifically on challenging the official narrative of the disintegration of the 3 major skyscrapers in the World Trade Center complex that took place on September 11th. He has been lecturing widely across the US and in Canada. Those who see his presentation rarely walk away still thinking that fires alone could have brought down the buildings.

About Me

Carol Brouillet is a longtime activist who organized three conferences on Strategies to Transform the Global Economy and (the first) marches on her Senators and Congresswoman in January 2002 to Demand a Congressional Investigation of 9-11. She publishes the Deception Dollars, and Co-Founded the 9-11 Truth Alliance, and the Northern California 9-11 Truth Alliance . She organized premieres of films, educational events, marches, rallies for 9-11 Truth, the San Francisco International Inquiry into 9-11, and produced the film Behind Every Terrorist- There is a Bush. She is also a mother of three boys and held a weekly Listening Project in downtown Palo Alto from October 2001 to October 2007, now she holds it once a month on the 11th, in solidarity with other 9/11 Truth activists worldwide. She ran for Congress in 2006 and 2008 on the Green Party ticket on a 9-11 Truth, Peace, Impeachment platform. From April 2007 to September 2008 she hosted a radio show on We The People Radio Network entitled- Questioning War- Organizing Resistance. She currently hosts a radio show called Community Currency on the Progressive Radio Network.